James Whitcomb Riley Quotes
American - Poet October 7, 1849 - July 22, 1916

The most essential factor is persistence - the determination never to allow your energy or enthusiasm to be dampened by the discouragement that must inevitably come.
James Whitcomb Riley

When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck.
James Whitcomb Riley

The ripest peach is highest on the tree.
James Whitcomb Riley

Continuous, unflagging effort, persistence and determination will win. Let not the man be discouraged who has these.
James Whitcomb Riley

It is no use to grumble and complain; It's just as cheap and easy to rejoice; When God sorts out the weather and sends rain - Why, rain's my choice.
James Whitcomb Riley

The anger of a person who is strong, can always bide its time.
James Whitcomb Riley

When you awaken some morning and hear that somebody or other has been discovered, you can put it down as a fact that he discovered himself years ago - since that time he has been toiling, working, and striving to make himself worthy of general discovery.
James Whitcomb Riley


Joe Hill Quotes
American - Activist October 7, 1879 - 1915

Work and pray, live on hay, you'll get pie in the sky when you die.
Joe Hill

If the workers took a notion they could stop all speeding trains; every ship upon the ocean they can tie with mighty chains.
Joe Hill

I will die like a true-blue rebel. Don't waste any time in mourning - organize.
Joe Hill


Niels Bohr Quotes
Danish - Physicist October 7, 1885 - November 18, 1962

Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it.
Niels Bohr

If quantum mechanics hasn't profoundly shocked you, you haven't understood it yet.
Niels Bohr

Prediction is very difficult, especially if it's about the future.
Niels Bohr

A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself.
Niels Bohr

Never express yourself more clearly than you are able to think.
Niels Bohr

Your theory is crazy, but it's not crazy enough to be true.
Niels Bohr

Technology has advanced more in the last thirty years than in the previous two thousand. The exponential increase in advancement will only continue.
Niels Bohr

An expert is a man who has made all the mistakes which can be made, in a narrow field.
Niels Bohr

Everything we call real is made of things that cannot be regarded as real.
Niels Bohr

The opposite of a fact is falsehood, but the opposite of one profound truth may very well be another profound truth.
Niels Bohr

Einstein, stop telling God what to do!
Niels Bohr

The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
Niels Bohr

While the finish given to our picture of the world by the theory of relativity has already been absorbed into the general scientific consciousness, this has scarcely occurred to the same extent with those aspects of the general problem of knowledge which have been elucidated by the quantum theory.
Niels Bohr

When it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry. The poet, too, is not nearly so concerned with describing facts as with creating images.
Niels Bohr

How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.
Niels Bohr

Every description of natural processes must be based on ideas which have been introduced and defined by the classical theory.
Niels Bohr

No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical.
Niels Bohr

Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question.
Niels Bohr

Humanity will... be confronted with dangers of unprecedented character unless, in due time, measures can be taken to forestall a disastrous competition in such formidable armaments and to establish an international control of the manufacture and use of the powerful materials.
Niels Bohr

There are some things so serious you have to laugh at them.
Niels Bohr

It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how Nature is. Physics concerns what we say about Nature.
Niels Bohr


Henry A. Wallace Quotes
American - Vice President October 7, 1888 - November 18, 1965

A fascist is one whose lust for money or power is combined with such an intensity of intolerance toward those of other races, parties, classes, religions, cultures, regions or nations as to make him ruthless in his use of deceit or violence to attain his ends.
Henry A. Wallace

It may be shocking to some people in this country to realize that, without meaning to do so, they hold views in common with Hitler when they preach discrimination against other religious, racial or economic groups.
Henry A. Wallace

Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.
Henry A. Wallace

It is no coincidence that the growth of modern tyrants has in every case been heralded by the growth of prejudice.
Henry A. Wallace

The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way.
Henry A. Wallace

The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism.
Henry A. Wallace

With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.
Henry A. Wallace

If we define an American fascist as one who in case of conflict puts money and power ahead of human beings, then there are undoubtedly several million fascists in the United States.
Henry A. Wallace

This dullness of vision regarding the importance of the general welfare to the individual is the measure of the failure of our schools and churches to teach the spiritual significance of genuine democracy.
Henry A. Wallace

Fascism is a worldwide disease. Its greatest threat to the United States will come after the war, either via Latin America or within the United States itself.
Henry A. Wallace

Monopolists who fear competition and who distrust democracy because it stands for equal opportunity would like to secure their position against small and energetic enterprise.
Henry A. Wallace

Most American fascists are enthusiastically supporting the war effort. They are doing this even in those cases where they hope to have profitable connections with German chemical firms after the war ends.
Henry A. Wallace

The fascists in most Latin American countries tell the people that the reason their wages will not buy as much in the way of goods is because of Yankee imperialism. The fascists in Latin America learn to speak and act like natives.
Henry A. Wallace

The symptoms of fascist thinking are colored by environment and adapted to immediate circumstances. But always and everywhere they can be identified by their appeal to prejudice and by the desire to play upon the fears and vanities of different groups in order to gain power.
Henry A. Wallace

Until democracy in effective enthusiastic action fills the vacuum created by the power of modern inventions, we may expect the fascists to increase in power after the war both in the United States and in the world.
Henry A. Wallace

We must not tolerate oppressive government or industrial oligarchy in the form of monopolies and cartels.
Henry A. Wallace

The worldwide, agelong struggle between fascism and democracy will not stop when the fighting ends in Germany and Japan.
Henry A. Wallace

If we put our trust in the common sense of common men and 'with malice toward none and charity for all' go forward on the great adventure of making political, economic and social democracy a practical reality, we shall not fail.
Henry A. Wallace

What we must understand is that the industries, processes, and inventions created by modern science can be used either to subjugate or liberate. The choice is up to us.
Henry A. Wallace

A liberal knows that the only certainty in this life is change but believes that the change can be directed toward a constructive end.
Henry A. Wallace

The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information.
Henry A. Wallace

If this liberal potential is properly channeled, we may expect the area of freedom of the United States to increase. The problem is to spend up our rate of social invention in the service of the welfare of all the people.
Henry A. Wallace

In an effort to eliminate the possibility of any rival growing up, some monopolists would sacrifice democracy itself.
Henry A. Wallace

It has been claimed at times that our modern age of technology facilitates dictatorship.
Henry A. Wallace

Our chemical and other manufacturing concerns are all too often ready to let the Germans have Latin American markets, provided the American companies can work out an arrangement which will enable them to charge high prices to the consumer inside the United States.
Henry A. Wallace

The European brand of fascism will probably present its most serious postwar threat to us via Latin America.
Henry A. Wallace

The moral and spiritual aspects of both personal and international relationships have a practical bearing which so-called practical men deny.
Henry A. Wallace

The myth of fascist efficiency has deluded many people.
Henry A. Wallace

The obvious types of American fascists are dealt with on the air and in the press. These demagogues and stooges are fronts for others. Dangerous as these people may be, they are not so significant as thousands of other people who have never been mentioned.
Henry A. Wallace

There are probably several hundred thousand if we narrow the definition to include only those who in their search for money and power are ruthless and deceitful.
Henry A. Wallace

They are patriotic in time of war because it is to their interest to be so, but in time of peace they follow power and the dollar wherever they may lead.
Henry A. Wallace


Vaughn Monroe Quotes
American - Musician October 7, 1911 - May 21, 1973

Well, we like to let down our hair and pep it up at the dances, but we keep it slower when we broadcast. We have to please everybody, and that softer music appeals to the larger amount of people. It's like eating too much cake. You have to have your steak too.
Vaughn Monroe

I knew that we were clicking when mimics started kidding my voice, I'll know that I'm on the way out when they stop doing their imitations.
Vaughn Monroe

There are hundreds of people running around with great voices. If they would study and develop them they could become great singers.
Vaughn Monroe

How in the world any one weighing 185 pounds can be cute is beyond me.
Vaughn Monroe

If I had my choice, I'd pick a song that tells a story every time. There is a great deal of pleasure in doing the vocal on a number that you can put feeling into.
Vaughn Monroe

It now costs more to amuse a child than it once did to educate his father.
Vaughn Monroe


R. D. Laing Quotes
Scottish - Psychologist October 7, 1927 - August 23, 1989

Schizophrenia cannot be understood without understanding despair.
R. D. Laing

Life is a sexually transmitted disease and the mortality rate is one hundred percent.
R. D. Laing

Insanity - a perfectly rational adjustment to an insane world.
R. D. Laing

We are all in a post-hypnotic trance induced in early infancy.
R. D. Laing

If I don't know I don't know, I think I know. If I don't know I know, I think I don't know.
R. D. Laing

We are all murderers and prostitutes - no matter to what culture, society, class, nation one belongs, no matter how normal, moral, or mature, one takes oneself to be.
R. D. Laing

The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds.
R. D. Laing

Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.
R. D. Laing

Creative people who can't help but explore other mental territories are at greater risk, just as someone who climbs a mountain is more at risk than someone who just walks along a village lane.
R. D. Laing

Rule A: Don't. Rule A1: Rule A doesn't exist. Rule A2: Do not discuss the existence or non-existence of Rules A, A1 or A2.
R. D. Laing

We are effectively destroying ourselves by violence masquerading as love.
R. D. Laing

Whether life is worth living depends on whether there is love in life.
R. D. Laing

We live in a moment of history where change is so speeded up that we begin to see the present only when it is already disappearing.
R. D. Laing

There is no such condition as 'schizophrenia', but the label is a social fact and the social fact a political event.
R. D. Laing

True guilt is guilt at the obligation one owes to oneself to be oneself. False guilt is guilt felt at not being what other people feel one ought to be or assume that one is.
R. D. Laing

Children do not give up their innate imagination, curiosity, dreaminess easily. You have to love them to get them to do that.
R. D. Laing

Freud was a hero. He descended to the Underworld and met there stark terrors. He carried with him his theory as a Medusa's head which turned these terrors to stone.
R. D. Laing

Alienation as our present destiny is achieved only by outrageous violence perpetrated by human beings on human beings.
R. D. Laing

There is a great deal of pain in life and perhaps the only pain that can be avoided is the pain that comes from trying to avoid pain.
R. D. Laing

The experience and behavior that gets labeled schizophrenic is a special strategy that a person invents in order to live in an unlivable situation.
R. D. Laing